Light agents emails to tickets appear as internal comments
My comment below was in response to this FAQ question
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/226467267?page=1#comment_360004003594
I understand that through the GUI in Zendesk that this light-agent can not reply to a ticket, but through regular Email the ticket should be updated as normal.
I even tried to add the Light Agent to the CC list. but this did not change the behaviour.
We have given our Sales team access to tickets as light agents but if they cannot reply to the emails it is useless to us.
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@... I have a partial workaround. While this example does not get you the ability to have a specific custom message sent to the requester from the Sales person, It does allow the light agent to send an email to the requester to let them know that the Sales person is aware of the ticket and helping to work towards a resolution.
Create a set of macros (one for each Salesperson) where each macro has a multiple choice set of titles to preset responses that can be sent to the requester. When the sales person uses the macro, a unique text string is put into a private comment.
Triggers are created, one for each response type (looking for those unique text strings as the trigger) for each salesperson. The trigger sees the unique text string in the private comment and can then cause an email to be sent to the requester with a much more detailed preset message from the sales person. Each trigger's email can be customized to the type of reply the sales person wants to send the requestor. The email content can even be 'signed' by the sales person.
The email the requester gets lets them know that the sales person is aware of the ticket and is taking some action (that you define).
If needed, the sales person can then follow up directly with the customer via text, phone, email, etc. (outside of Zendesk) for any personal attention required.
You could create many types of prepared responses that while 'canned', helps the customer know that their salesperson is actively involved.
With this same basic formula, a light agent can also affect change and workflow in the ticket by using pre-created macros and triggers designed to change the settings of custom drop-down fields in the ticket.
I hope this helps. With creative uses like this, it gives our light agents more capabilities than just a private comment. We call this Light Agents Plus (about half way between the default capability of a light agent and that of a full agent).
If you need an actual macro & trigger example of how to do this, let me know.
Andrew
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While I appreciate the above workarounds, that's a whole lot of work and micro management for what should just be Light Agents sending an email.
Was fully considering this commercial add-on but if it doesn't allow Light Agents to even communicate with customers, then it doesn't provide enough value. Sales persons occasionally don a support hat or sometimes issues are handed off to them, e.g. if it's more of an implementation issue than something more technical.
What about Side Conversations, do those allow communication between Light Agents and customers?
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I have another use case. We have account managers or other customer-facing technical resources who want to chime in on a ticket. Their response never gets delivered to end-users which defeats the purpose of having light agents. Ideally, if a light agent replies from their inbox, the response should be public, no matter what. And if a light agent wants to add an internal comment, he/she should log on to the Zendesk portal and type an internal comment.
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Hi Aran,
You got that right! Officially, light agents should not be able to create public comments. More context here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020374434-Understanding-when-email-replies-become-public-or-private-comments#topic_bhg_qzk_fhb
I trust this confirms!
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Hello,
If an agent replies from their email the comment is public but if a light agent replies via their email the comment is private!
Did zendesk publish an update or new settings to allow light agents' email replies to be public? -
Hi Carl,
Light agent's reply via email are designed to be converted to a private comment, as what Phoebe mentioned.
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